The Armageddon Project: Tales From the Kingdom Hall

The Armageddon Project

Tales from the Kingdom Hall

As told by

Larry S Gray

Michael J Hart

Copyright 2009

All rights reserved

Smashwords Edition Copyright 2013

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Table of Contents

Dedications

Author’s Note

Prologue -

In the Beginning

The Forbidden Fruit

Let Us Assemble

Arrested Development

Chapter One - History

Chapter Two - Belief (Dogma)

Chapter Three - Armageddon

Chapter Four - Dialogue

Chapter Five - 1975

Chapter Six - Aftermath by Larry (What a Long, Strange Trip)

Chapter Seven - Aftermath by Michael (What If?)

Chapter Eight - On Brainwashing and Cultism

Chapter Nine - Glossary

Chapter Ten - Revelation

Afterthoughts

Dedications

I dedicate this writing to all those who had to suffer through my attitudes, mood swings, and downright nastiness over the years.  Some of these people stuck by me while others ran because they had no idea what I was living through, and I had no idea how to tell them.  Above all, I dedicate this to Sean and Lyndsay.  Without them to guide me towards the wonders that are the true world, I firmly believe I would not be here.  Thank you, and I love you more than you'll ever imagine. 

- Michael J Hart, September 8, 2009

I dedicate these writings to my family who’ve been here through it all. To Maryann, my wife of twenty-four years, who saved me from myself after I saved myself from them: thank you for still being here through all my frequent bursts of insanity. To my daughters Lauren and Amy, grandson Little John and granddaughter Kennedy: thank you for growing up normal, it means the world to me. To my father; who left this life in 1983, who resisted to the bitter end, and who by his very existence allowed me to realize that there was indeed another way, that there was something else out there: thank you for giving me those occasional glimpses of the real world when I was little. And to my sister Cynthia, who lived and died without ever knowing the difference.

- Larry S Gray, September 11, 2009

Author’s Note

Former Jehovah’s Witnesses have written many books on this subject. Some such books are very good, some are not so great, and some just outright stink. But however good or poor the writing, the stories revolve around the same thing - people who were held slave to an organization that messed them up in some way or another. Statistics show that more than one million persons have left the Jehovah’s Witnesses over the last ten years. Yes, some of them died, some of them were thrown out, and some of them merely faded away. But a great many left for other reasons, and a chosen few felt the need to tell their stories to the public, and fewer still had the guts to actually follow through and bring their tales to the forefront. Every account I’ve read is a heartfelt rendering of what these people endured as Jehovah’s Witnesses, like a cross between a confession and a scream for help. Critics of these stories have stated repeatedly that most of them are overstuffed with feelings of bitterness, hatred and resentment, and that those feelings only serve to cloud their objectivity and dilute the potency of the very message they are attempting to get across. That may be so, but again, what we’re talking about here is truth. The true feelings expressed are what make those stories non-fiction. These people are telling their tales, pouring out their hearts and souls onto the printed page, articulating their gut feelings. What good what would it do them, or the reading public for that matter, if they were to tone down the rhetoric and gloss over the bad stuff? That would be tantamount to a mentally unstable individual visiting his psychiatrist and starting out with, Ok, Doc, I don’t want to sound angry today, so we’ll just talk about the happy stuff. Everything’s A-OK! It just doesn’t serve the purpose. This is not to say the book you are now holding in your hands is filled with bitterness, anger, hatred and resentment. It is not. We strive to be objective in this memoir, and we tell the truth. During this long journey, events took place that made us mad, that caused us hurt. When we relate those certain events, we tell it from the heart, and if a little irritation tends to slip through, so be it. This is the real thing; we were there, and we tell it like it is. Like the umpire - we call ‘em as we see ‘em. That is the true meaning of non-fiction…

PROLOGUE

In the Beginning

Herein lay the only evidence of a baseball game in the Bible; Genesis 1:1 In the big inning…

And that, my friends, is about as humorous as this tale is going to get. We are not going to spend a great deal of time and space relating and debating Jehovah’s Witness dogma and doctrine, as there are quite a few well-written books of that nature already available to the public. This work is neither a pro-Jehovah’s Witness promotion nor an anti-Jehovah’s Witness diatribe; the opinions derived from reading this material will be strictly up to the reader. From the perspective of the authors, however, the tale that shall be told is a long and sad one - interesting, entertaining, provocative, scathing, nearly unbelievable and very disturbing. I have a family member who also was a teenage Jehovah's Witness and he also will be telling his tales in this project; there is reason to believe that he's emerged in a bit worse shape than I have. I will explain these reasons later, but herein, just a few things that encompass being born, raised, and then living life as a teenage Jehovah's Witness. Therefore, this story is more of a personal nature, a memoir, a documentary of sorts, from the perspective of two persons who spent their entire childhoods as Jehovah’s Witnesses and knew nothing else. We will, however, devote the first and second chapters to a history of the Jehovah’s Witness organization and an overview of their doctrine and teachings so that readers who are totally unfamiliar with the Watchtower Society and the Jehovah’s Witnesses will not end up completely confused by the references and the jargon. We'll briefly touch on such Witness doctrine as the prohibition of celebrating holidays and birthdays, their prohibition of blood transfusions and other medical procedures, their stand on rape, their insistence on members’ complete isolationism from anyone who is not a member, and their demand for strict and unimpeded adherence to the Watchtower Society's rules and regulations. We'll touch on Armageddon, the 144,000, Bible prophecy, the New World Translation of the Bible, the elders and the Governing Body. We will also supply a glossary of terms and phrases used strictly by members so that you, the reader, will have some earthly idea of what we’re talking about.

Those of you who are former Jehovah’s Witnesses will recognize the content for what it is; the material of the first chapter will stir memories of what you learned and how you dealt with it, and you'll be reacquainted with terminology likely long forgotten. You may then join us for the long strange trip through childhood and teendom as Jehovah’s Witnesses and, perhaps even more disturbing, the aftermath of the time spent therein.

The Forbidden Fruit

I use the term Forbidden Fruit to represent anything you desire that is willfully held back from you. We're not talking about an apple, a snake and a naked woman under a tree, but does anyone know that the term Adam’s apple refers to the legend that when Adam took the so-called forbidden fruit offered by his wife Eve and ate it; it got stuck in his throat? Yes, that is why humankind today has what is referred to in unscientific medical circles as an Adam’s apple. Anyway, growing up as a Jehovah’s Witness, most things that everyday normal kids take for granted are completely forbidden. If one has a mind of one’s own, and even a little bit of a rebel spirit, this forbidden fruit is going to become an obsessive desire. You are going to want to do things, and have things, and be things, like everyone else around you. Here are some of the things that, when I was in the process of evolving into my real world, I felt I had to have:

Rock and roll music, fictional books and magazines other than the Watchtower and Awake!, worldly friends, birthdays, holidays, sports, concerts, parties, worldly girlfriends, just all of the things I missed out on in my childhood. Everything that was forbidden I had to sample. In my case I almost went too far. Since 1976 I've been doing all manner of exploring and learning, and not all of it has been pleasant. I was not an A student in the school of life, mainly because I was teaching myself and not all the leaders I followed were worthy. Since 1976 I've become an avid rock music fan, an avid fiction reader, found a great interest in things strange and unusual (sci-fi, horror, ghosts, occult, supernatural), developed an interest in politics (went so far as to run for Stockton, New Jersey town council in 1999 and garner 47 votes), developed a taste for booze, went on and off drugs, grew my hair, botched a great many relationships with the opposite sex, went to but did not finish college, worked at numerous jobs, got swindled more than once, got talked into things more than once, missed out on countless opportunities for fear of failure (and probably missed a whole lot more for fear of success), declared bankruptcy, built a home, lost a home, wrecked three cars, had two operations, wrote a book, got married and started a great family. I've been an office boy, a salesman, a manager, a limousine driver, a bartender, a waiter, and a professional. I've hired people and I've fired people. I myself have been fired more than once. I've been to a shrink more than once, and I’ve made an ass of myself too many times to count. I've made a great many wrong decisions. I've caused the people I love untold grief because of my occasional bursts of pure stupidity, but they've stood by me and for that I will be eternally grateful. All that notwithstanding, I think I turned out all right. I'm almost normal, and that's OK, because I believe total normalcy to be extremely boring. I'm still plugging along, and not a day goes by when I don't learn something new or see something I didn't know about. When I think back on the period between 1976 and 1984, I shudder, because that was when I was at my most self-destructive, and I didn't even know it. I was too busy having the time of my life. I survived those years, for some reason, and here I am.

1976 thru 1984 is going to encompass a major part of my story, and 1979 through the bulk of the eighties for my cousin and co-author of this work. Although the main focus is on growing up in the Witness world and experiencing childhood and teendom as one of them, I believe the aftermath is of equal, if not greater, importance. Therefore, much will be devoted to the years following our escape as well.

The forbidden fruit is everywhere. What I've learned, however, is that most of it is simply not forbidden.

Let us Assemble…

In addition to the requisite five meetings per week that Jehovah’s Witnesses must attend, also held are assemblies and conventions. An assembly is held twice a year and is a circuit event, usually held at Jehovah's Witness Assembly Halls around the nation. In the early days, these twice-yearly events were held in places like high school auditoriums or local arenas; in our case the Trenton War Memorial was once such place, before the new Assembly Hall was built in Buckingham, Pennsylvania. A convention is held once a year and is a district event, a much larger gathering. These events are held at large venues such as racetracks, fairground grandstands and stadiums in large cities. In our time, we attended these district conventions in such noble places as Philadelphia’s Vet Stadium, Delaware Park Racetrack, the Allentown Fairgrounds, and Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City. The most colossal of these events in my memory was a seven-day marathon in July of 1969 at Yankee Stadium and, yes, every seat was filled.Circuit assemblies were held in the spring and fall and consisted of a long weekend of teaching, preaching and fellowship. There was a Friday night program, a Saturday afternoon and evening program and a Sunday morning and afternoon program. Immersions (baptisms) were held on Saturday; assembly halls had their own pools, but if an assembly was held at a public building, immersion candidates were bussed to a local swim club or beach for the immersion ceremony. We attended numerous assemblies in places like high schools in Plainfield, New Brunswick, Lakewood and Camden, and the ever-popular Trenton War Memorial, before the Buckingham Assembly Hall opened in 1971. I actually looked forward to these assemblies because for me they were more of a social event than a learning experience. By the time I was seventeen and had my own car, the twice-yearly event at Buckingham was like a reunion; a time to dress up and act cool, troll for girls, hang out with guys from other congregations, take pictures and act like I was somebody special. As things progressed and my Witness days dwindled, I still went to the assemblies to hang out and act cool, but things were going sour and the thrill was gone. The last one I attended was in the spring of 1976, just short of my turning nineteen, and it was so uneventful there's not much to say about it. District conventions were held in mid-summer. These were large-scale events ranging from four to seven days. Again, immersions took place on Saturday, with busloads of people going to some local place with water to be baptized. Attendance was mandatory at these events and Witnesses were required to take time off from work to be available for all sessions. Usually held in larger cities, travel was necessary, at the individual's own personal expense. From the earliest I can remember of these conventions up until 1967, they were held at the Trenton Fairgrounds in the grandstand, which was local with minimal travel required. I can recall commuting to the Philadelphia convention of 1973 (the assembly at which I got immersed) because it was a mere hour trip, but for the Jersey City events of 1970 through 1972 we had to stay overnight, like some holy righteous mini-vacation. The same for the Allentown, Pennsylvania and Wilmington, Delaware events of 1975 through 1977. 1969 was the big one at Yankee Stadium, and we stayed at a hotel in Yonkers for an entire week - my mother, little sister and I, and my cousin and co-writer of this story and his folks. My folks at times liked to combine convention with vacation, the result of which was our 1968 trip to Burlington, Vermont, our 1974 trip to Knoxville, Tennessee and our 1975 trip to Taunton, Massachusetts and Cape Cod. In 1979 through 1982, we went to the summer convention in New Haven, Connecticut. Although I had been finished as a Witness by 1976, these trips were again like little family vacations. My mother and sister would attend the convention ceremonies at the Civic Center while my dad and I would do such things as explore the town, go to the track, hang out by the hotel pool, drink in a local bar, or just relax and watch TV. Bear in mind that my dad was not a Witness, never had been and had no intentions of becoming one, so that made it slightly easier on me. There was some small degree of normalcy in that we could almost pull off an actual family vacation by combining it with a convention. That covers all the years except 1978, and the reason for that is I honestly can't remember where, if or when I went to a convention. I would have to assume I did not, because I was way removed from the Witnesses by then, living in my own private world of wonder. If it had been a convention/vacation combination, I imagine I'd recall it, and if it weren’t, I never would have gone anyway. I was way gone by then, in more ways than one...

Arrested Development

As one suffers such indignities as a little kid, just imagine how much worse it becomes, as one grows older. This is where it usually gets tricky, and those of you with minds of your own will begin to realize that something is just not right. You want to please your parents, whom you believe are doing this to you because they mean well and want only the best for you (and in most cases, as in ours, this is true), but you are sick of being the outcast, the class freak. You want to be cool, you want to fit in, you want to be liked and, the saddest thing is, you don't even know how. You are torn between and your very sanity is at stake, and the groundwork is being laid, right there, for some very rough days in the not-to-distant future. Some of you will turn eighteen and flee the grasp of this organization, to the utter dismay of your folks. Although that is the absolute best solution, it is one wrought with peril and danger and you better be up for the challenge, because now, after you've basically missed your entire childhood and formative years, you have some major work cut out for you. You now have to teach yourself how to exist and function in the real world and at the same time the temptation is great to run amok and catch up on everything you've missed. It's hard, it's dangerous, and it could possibly take a lifetime. This is the path I chose, as well as my cousin and collaborator in this project. We opted out, and more than thirty years later, the journey is by no means over.

Why bother, you may ask. Because I've seen the alternative. Kids who were born and raised and didn't exercise their free will and continued into adulthood in this organization. We have, in our rather large family, individuals who chose this path instead...

I leap forward here, to the year 2009. I am fifty-two years old. I am sound of mind and I believe I've put this all behind me, though it's all still lurking around in the back of my brain. I live a fairly normal life, even though I'm still running about ten years behind. Yes, I had to catch up as I taught myself how to function in life. These few things will give an idea of what I mean when I say I was running way behind:

I did not finish high school when I should have. Having sense enough to rectify that, I got my high school diploma at twenty-two.

I was also twenty-two when I played on my first real sports teams; intramural baseball and bowling at the company I worked for. To this day I still stink at both, but I love to play.

I started college at twenty-six. I did well but did not finish, as by this time I needed to work fulltime. I still do.

I did not have a complete sexual encounter until three months shy of twenty-one.

I was twenty-seven before I could handle a relationship without botching it completely.

I got my own apartment at twenty-seven, and got married two weeks shy of twenty-eight.

My daughters were born when I was twenty-eight and thirty-four, respectively. I was forty-eight when my grandson came along.

I got interested in politics at twenty-six, and first voted at twenty-eight, in 1985 for New Jersey governor. I first voted for president at thirty-one, in 1988. I haven't missed an election since.

The first Christmas tree was erected in my own house when I was twenty-eight.

The first time I went out for Halloween, actually trick-or-treating with kids, I was thirty-four.

I was still renting group vacation houses at the Jersey Shore and drinking like a college kid at thirty-eight.

The list goes on....

On the flip side, I drank my first beer at fifteen, first puked up booze at sixteen, snuck out to my first rock concert (Nazareth and Deep Purple) at seventeen, and smoked my first joint at eighteen. Even then I was on my way out; my rebel flag was beginning to unfurl.

It may also be interesting to note that the bulk of my close friends, people I actually hang out with, are about ten to fifteen years younger than I am.

We are telling these stories in hopes of helping anyone out there who may be dealing with these problems now, or who may have dealt with them in the past and are still trying to get past it all. We offer closure. We also have an ulterior motive. Putting these experiences to paper and telling all this to the public (getting it out of our systems, essentially) is like a great enema. A vast purging, a good vomit. We've put it all together, and now we are going to let it all out!

Now that you have our book in your hands, sit back and get ready. Leave the light on. We invite you all along for the ride!!

THE ARMAGEDDON PROJECT

Tales from the Kingdom Hall

Chapter One – A Brief History of the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Watchtower Organization

The Jehovah’s Witness movement began and was established in 1879 under the direct guidance of Charles Taze Russell of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Mr. Russell, born in 1852, organized his own religion at a very young age. As a young man who was extremely interested in all things scriptural, he had major difficulty in accepting the doctrine of eternal hellfire, and as his studies progressed he came to deny not only eternal punishment, but also the concept of the Trinity and the deity of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. At age eighteen he organized a Bible class in Pittsburgh and within several years he sought to popularize his peculiar ideas on religious doctrine. In 1876 he co-published with Nelson Barbour a magazine called The Herald of the Morning and by 1884 had full control of the publication. He renamed it The Watchtower - Announcing Jehovah’s Kingdom, and founded Zion’s Watchtower Tract Society, which soon thereafter came to be known as the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, formed in 1881 and incorporated in 1884. Mr. Russell came to believe that the Bible could only be understood according to his own interpretations, which was a bit of a dangerous arrangement since he himself controlled what was printed in the Watchtower. Let it be known that this type of assertion is typical amongst leaders of cult religions.

This religion does precede Mr. Russell, however; they can actually trace their roots back to the Adventist movement of the early nineteenth century instituted by William Miller, a Baptist preacher who in 1816 proclaimed that Christ would return to Earth by 1843. That year passed without event, as did many more, and caused most of Mr. Miller’s following to break apart. However, some of his disgruntled and disappointed followers kept the movement alive, and several sects blossomed under the heading of Adventism, one of which grew into the current Seventh Day Adventist denomination.

Jehovah’s Witnesses are able to trace their roots back to the Adventists, but they are loath to admit this to outsiders; in fact, many Witnesses themselves do not even know these details. The Witnesses are accustomed to defending themselves against the charge that they are a new religious cult, and their classic response is that their own faith is the most ancient religious group, older than even the Catholic and Protestant churches. In their publication Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Divine Purpose, the claim is made that Jehovah’s Witnesses have a history almost 6,000 years long, beginning while the first man, Adam, was still alive and that Adam’s son Abel was the first of an unbroken line of Witnesses, and that Jesus’ disciples were all Witnesses of Jehovah.  Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Divine Purpose, pp 8-9.

Any outside observer with any semblance of Bible knowledge quickly realizes that the sect has merely appropriated to it all the characters named in the Bible as faithful witnesses of God. By this kind of conjecture, the sect is able to stretch its history back to the beginning of the human race - at least in the eyes of believers who are willing to accept such reasoning. Many outside observers dismiss this type of rhetoric and calculate that the conception of the Jehovah’s Witnesses dates back only as far as the time of Charles Taze Russell. Mr. Russell studied scripture under various Adventist clergy, meeting with a small circle of friends to discuss the Bible. Eventually this informal study group came to view him as their leader, their pastor. One of the things that attracted Russell to the teachings of Nelson Barbour was the belief that Christ had returned invisibly in 1874; this concept was presented in The Herald and captured Russell’s attention. It meant that this particular Adventist splinter group had not remained defeated as others had when Christ did not appear in 1874 as they had predicted. Somehow this group had managed to hold on to that date by declaring that the Lord had indeed returned at the appointed time, only invisibly. Although this idea appealed to young Mr. Russell, the reading public seemed to have a hard time swallowing the rumor of an invisible Second Coming. This resulted in Barbour’s Herald of the Morning to lose ground financially. In 1876, Mr. Russell, who was then a prosperous haberdasher, offered to become the financial backer of the magazine in exchange for being named Assistant Editor, and he began contributing his own brand of religious articles as well as monetary donations. Hence Russell’s small study group became affiliated with Barbour’s.

Russell and Barbour believed and taught that Christ’s invisible return of 1874 would be followed, in the spring of 1878, by the Rapture - the physical seizing by God of His believers to heaven. When this Rapture failed to occur in 1878, Barbour came up with what he called new light on this and other doctrines, but Russell rejected some of these new ideas. Soon after, Russell resigned from The Herald and started his own magazine, first published on July 1, 1879 as Zion’s Watchtower and Herald of Christ’s Presence. By this point, Russell no longer wanted to consider himself an Adventist or a Millerite, even though he still considered both Miller and Barbour as instruments chosen by God to lead His people. The formation of a distinct denomination around Russell was a gradual development, as his break was not with Adventism, but with the policies and teachings of Nelson Barbour. Russell began traveling around speaking from the pulpits of Protestant churches as well as to his own followers. In 1879, he organized about thirty study groups, which he called congregations, scattered from the Ohio valley to the New England coast. Each local class came to recognize him as Pastor Russell, although distance along with his writing and publishing activity allowed for only an occasional personal visit. Russell’s increasingly deviating teachings forced his followers to disconnect from other church groups and to create a denomination of their own. Commencing in a small branch of Adventism that went to the extreme of setting precise dates for the return of Christ and the Rapture, Russell took it even further when, in 1882, he openly rejected the doctrine of the Trinity, and began publishing writings against it.

His followers had been educated to believe that Russell himself was the faithful and wise servant or faithful and discreet slave of Matthew 24:45, also known as the Laodicean Messenger, God’s seventh and final spokesman to the Christian church. He named his group of disciples the International Bible Students Association (the term Jehovah’s Witnesses was not introduced until long after Russell’s death). Charles Taze Russell lived long enough to see the failure of the dates he had predicted for the Rapture and died on October 31, 1916, over two years after the world was supposed to have ended, according to his calculation, in the early autumn of 1914. His disciples, however, viewed the raging World War as a reason to believe that the end was still imminent. They buried him in a Ross, Pennsylvania, cemetery beneath a headstone identifying him as the Laodicean Messenger, and erected next to his grave a massive stone pyramid emblazoned with the cross and crown symbol he was so fond of, along with the name Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. According to the directions left behind by Russell, his successor to the presidency would share power with an editorial committee and the Watchtower Corporation’s board of directors, whom Russell had appointed for life. The new president, Joseph Franklin (Judge) Rutherford, soon began concentrating all the organizational authority into his own hands. Rutherford, a skilled lawyer who had served as Russell’s vice-president and chief legal advisor, combined his own legal expertise with an unscrupulous approach to internal corporate politics. He exploited a loophole in their so-called lifetime appointments to unseat most of the Watchtower directors without the need for a membership vote, going so far as to have the local police summoned to the Society’s Brooklyn headquarters to break up the board meeting and evict them from the property.  Faith on the March, A. H. Macmillan, pp 78-80. After securing the headquarters complex and the sect’s corporate entities, Rutherford then turned his attention to the rest of the organization, replacing locally elected elders with his own appointees, transforming the congregations into a tightly-knit organizational machine run from his office. Some local congregations broke away, forming Russellite splinter groups, but most of the International Bible Students remained under his control. Rutherford renamed the sect Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1931, to distinguish them from any of the groups that had broken away, and also to underscore the direction in which he was now sending his followers.

Rutherford also strove to redirect the sect’s emphasis on individual character development and scriptural education to a dynamic public witnessing work, distributing the Society’s literature from house to house. By 1927 this door-to-door preaching and literature distribution was an essential activity required of all members, no exceptions. This literature consisted mainly of Rutherford’s relentless diatribes against the government, against prohibition and big business, and against the Roman Catholic Church. He also took to the radio; expostulating populist and anti-Catholic sentiment to draw additional converts. His vitriolic attacks, blaring from portable phonographs carried to peoples’ doors and from the loudspeakers of sound cars parked across from churches ended up causing mob violence and government persecution against the Witnesses in many parts of the world. Like Russell, Rutherford also tried his skill at prophecy, predicting that Biblical patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would be resurrected to a perfect human condition in 1925 to rule as princes over the earth, and to replace the worldly governments of men. Also named in his prophecy were Abel, Enoch, Noah, Job, Moses, Samuel, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel and John the Baptist; all ancient notables mentioned in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews. The Society actually built a compound for these prophets of old to dwell in upon their return to earthly life, a mansion just outside San Diego, which they named Beth-Sarim.  Millions Now Living Will Never Die, 1920, pp 89-90. Of course these Biblical personalities failed to show up, and Rutherford eventually quit predicting events tied to specific dates. Later, in referring to that great prophetic blunder, he confessed, I made an ass of myself.  Watchtower, October 1, 1984, p 24

Vice president Nathan Homer Knorr inherited the presidency when Rutherford died in 1942, but he left doctrinal matters largely in the hands of his newly named vice-president, Frederick William Franz. Franz had joined the sect as a young man under Russell, and had been serving at Brooklyn headquarters since 1920. Since Knorr lacked the personal magnetism and charisma of Russell and Rutherford, he focused the followers’ devotion on the organization rather than himself. An excellent administrator, Knorr shifted the sect’s focus from dynamic leadership to vibrant, energetic membership. He instituted training programs to transform members into effective recruiters. Instead of lugging a portable phonograph from house to house, blasting recordings of Judge Rutherford’s bitter lectures at people’s front doors, the average Jehovah’s Witness began receiving education on how to speak convincingly. Men, women and children were taught to give sermons at the doors on a variety of subjects. At the same time, Fred Franz worked diligently behind the scenes to restore faith in the sect’s chronological calculations, a subject largely ignored since Rutherford’s prophetic failure in 1925. This revised chronology established Christ’s invisible return as having taken place in 1914 instead of 1874. It also established, in Society literature that began being published in the 1960’s, the year 1975 as the likely time for Armageddon and the end of the current worldly system. Knorr’s training programs for proselytizing, plus Franz’ apocalyptic projections for 1975, combined to produce rapid growth in membership, with the annual rate of increase peaking at 13.5% in 1974. Everybody wanted to be saved, nobody wanted to die at Armageddon, and so they optimistically joined up with the Witnesses in the hope of getting in on this paradise new earth and promise of everlasting life in eternal peace under Christ. All this activity pushed meeting attendance at Kingdom Halls from around one hundred thousand when Knorr took over in 1942 to nearly five million by 1975.

During the 1970’s changes took place at Watchtower headquarters concerning presidential power. It first became accepted in theory that the Christian Church, which the Watchtower Society view themselves as all-inclusive, should not be governed under a one-man rule, but rather by a body similar to the twelve apostles. The seven-member board of directors had previously been portrayed as fulfilling this role, but in 1971 an expanded Governing Body was created with a total of eleven members, including the seven directors. The goal was to show that the leadership was derived from a religious or Godlike source, rather than from worldly, human-influenced corporate law. This new Governing Body was presented as further evidence of the sect’s being the one true church, when in actuality Nathan Knorr continued to rule the Jehovah’s Witnesses much as Russell and Rutherford had done before him. But by 1975, Governing Body members began insisting on exercising the powers granted to them in theory that had never really been theirs in practice. Over the strenuous objections of Vice-president Frederick Franz, the Body that he had been influential in creating finally began governing, so that when Knorr died in 1977, Franz inherited an emasculated presidency. An article in Time magazine, reporting the selection of Fred Franz as the new president, stated: Though few people know his name, he has acquired more-than-papal power over 2.2 million souls around the world.  Time, July 11, 1977, p 64. That statement might have had merit several years earlier, but at this point, it couldn’t have been further from the truth.

Franz also inherited an organization reeling over the failure of his own prophecy for 1975. Even at the Brooklyn headquarters, known as Bethel, small Bible study groups began questioning the 1914-based chronology that produced the 1975 deadline. Thus the rapidly growing sect actually began to lose members for the first time ever, as faithful constituents who had expected Armageddon to occur in 1975 became disillusioned and began turning away. When membership loss grew into the hundreds of thousands, president Franz and the conformist majority on the Governing Body took drastic action. In early 1980 they initiated a major crackdown on dissidents, breaking up the independent Bible study groups at Bethel and forming judicial committees to have those viewed as